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Tableaux Vivants and Triviality 165
Felicite, the Countess of Genlis. Thinking that young girls should strive for
a kind of self-observation while practicing gestures as a means of attaining a
beautiful appearance without spoiling their "naturalness," Genlis advocated
a strict, religiously based method that avoided the use of theoretical explanations.^^
Instead, historical scenes were enacted as tableaux vivants in the hopes
that bodily emulation of certain poses would transmit proper morals, politics
and Bildung well before young minds could grasp those abstract concepts." A
form of intellectually stimulating entertainment was also to result, insofar as
the audience—typically other children and Genlis in domestic isolation—was
to identify the scenes.^* Since Schopenhauer viewed Genlis as her predecessor
as a "saloniere and repubhcan novelist," she likely also drew on Genlis's
educational practices, which were believed to produce a combination of sociability
and unassuming graciousness.^'* These properties would have been
attractive to Schopenhauer, who abhorred women who displayed philosophical
or theoretical profundities.''"
As would accord with Genlis's theories, Gabriele's attitude-based education
in the text is represented as an intense mother-daughter exchange that
inculcates Gabriele with the values of renunciation long before she can see her
own life in those terms. To see this, Schopenhauer's conventional metaphors
need to be read as figures of identity. With Gabriele's father uninvolved in
family life, the text states that Auguste "zog Gabrielen in ihre schone innerliche
Welt, dort lebten Mutter und Tochter ein alien Uebrigen verborgenes,
engelgleiches Leben, in gegenseitigem Verstehen, wie diese Erde es selten
bringt" (Gl: 30). After Auguste's death the notion of mother-daughter identity
is reiterated even more forcefully: "nie hatte das Band geldst werden sollen,
das Mutter und Tochter so begluckend vereinte, ihre Herzen hatten immer zusammen,
in gleicher Bewegung schlagen mussen, bis von Einem Grabe beyde
in einer Stunde aufgenommen worden waren" (Gl: 32). Schopenhauer's language
of interiority, conventional though it may be, speaks of a psychic and
behavioral bond so complete that Gabriele is her mother in important ways,
not only in terms of physical appearance, but also in the sense that, to vary
Schopenhauer's metaphor, Gabriele's mother hterally seems to live on in her.
So forcefully does Gabriele recall her mother's presence that encountering her
causes Frau Dalling, Ernesto, and her own father to mistake her for Auguste
(Gl: 42, 57; G2: 11). More than surface effect is at stake in this remarkable
mother-daughter bond, for the attitudes were to shape a child's body and mind
in accordance with social and aesthetic norms. Such an inner and outer rapport
emerges under Auguste's uninterrupted monitoring (Gl: 30-31), leading
Gabriele to assimilate Auguste's respect for God, "stilles Dulden" and trust for
male authority as part of her recipe for feminine renunciation, particularly the
expectation that love can only exist in a woman's heart (G1: 30). Just as importantly,
however, Auguste's lessons supply Gabriele with a self-knowledge that,
as part of an ongoing internalized monitoring process (see Gl: 41), prevents